Actuator-plugin

Description

Author: Luca Olivetti

Controls a linear actuator or an horizon to horizon one through the parallel port.

Status

Last Update 2010

Detailed Description

These are the old fashioned traditional actuators, not to be confused with a Diseqc motor. A Diseqc motor takes its power from the antenna cable, while a linear actuator takes its power from a separate cable so it's usually stronger and moves faster. The downsides are that you have to use a separate cable with 2 wires for power+2 for position control, and that digital receivers only speak Diseqc, so you either have to find a model that can drive the motor (very expensive), use an external box that translates diseqc to 36v motor drive, ore use vdr with this plugin and a simple circuit.

Pictures

Position

Hardware Requirements

• free parallel port
• Interface parallel port <=> positioner

Schematics

thumb|none|Schematics

Installation

cd $SOURCEDIR/VDR
patch < PLUGINS/src/actuator/patches/vdr-<VERSION>.diff
cd PLUGINS/src/actuator/module
make
cd -
make all plugins

to be loaded with:

modprobe parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7

Versions-Historie

Version	Date	Description	Link
1.2.1	2010-10-10	Bug fix release (version 1.2.0 didn't actually work without /dev/actuator)
1.2.0	2010-10-09	Version for current development version of vdr (>= 1.7.15) DVB-S2 support (untested, I don't have DVB-S2 hardware) Experimental seractuator module (uses a serial port instead of a parallel port) Complete rewrite of the channel scanner The plugin can now work without an actuator (i.e. as a channel scanner only) with the command line option "-s" or "--scanonly"

Current Version

1.2.1

Links

1. Plugins Homepage